Taiba Akhuetie

A flower. No, a vegan sausage roll. A little treat for me on a Friday. That made me smile.

Yes, absolutely. Hair carries the history of the body. It grows from DNA. From scent, time, experience. When I work with hair, I’m handling living archives, kind of. It becomes a way of preserving emotions, memory, the physical and tactile.

I think I realised that from a very early age. Watching TV, black hair isn’t really shown; it isn’t really given the platform to be seen in a beautiful way as much as European hair. Also, where I grew up, in a very white middle-class area, I never ultimately felt comfortable in my skin. I was always desperate to fit in. I remember being jealous of the girls who had fringes, so I tried to cut my hair the way they did it because my braids and my hair texture were something that wasn’t represented. I didn’t find it beautiful.

It took me a long time. I remember I’d watch TV and see Beyoncé, and I’d tell my mum, ‘I want that hair,’ and she’d be like, ‘Taiba, that’s not her real hair.´ I would never believe her. Now, I can embrace my natural hair more, and I can embrace getting braids more, because that doesn’t make me ugly, you know? I think there’s often this association with being seen as what you are, which is Black. Being associated with braids. That’s something I was kind of avoiding for a long time. But now, I also see more people embracing their natural hair, embracing braids and stuff. I think we’re trying to reclaim it rather than resist it, basically. To be honest, I actually prefer wearing braids over a wig because I’m such a low-maintenance person anyway. I’m quite lazy with my own hair.

There wasn’t a specific hairstyle, but maybe the way I learnt how to braid. Because the natural way is to do it over, to the front basically, so that you can see what you’re doing. But the way you can do it faster is by doing it under. It’s so simple, but it’s one of my favourite things that I learnt back then.

I think what inspired me was the geometry of the ball and how the patterns meet the tech. I wanted to see how I could use those patterns in the texture of hair. I wanted to reimagine something global and masculine through my language, my craft, my symbolism as a female. Turning an object of sport into a work of adornment and storytelling. It also reminded me of when I used to play by myself. I was really good when I was younger. It felt like a happy memory.

Yes, I love how creative they are with it, even if it’s as simple as getting highlights. And it’s all types of people. There are the Black players, the white players, the Asian players. They are still not fully seen as equals, but everyone has their own thing going on. The bold hairstyles are a way to embrace who they are. It’s kind of a bubble in which other rules apply. Because in football, highlights are seen as masculine, but in everyday life, they are seen as feminine. It’s absurd. In a way, this different approach to masculinity is super interesting.

You know what, Saka. Just because I love Saka. He plays for Arsenal. And I haven’t seen him do anything cool. I wouldn’t do anything drastic; I would probably just play around with colour or something and keep his classic style of hair. Or I would give him a buzz cut and do something fun with that because I’ve never seen him with super short hair. That would be quite cool.

I mean, I obviously prefer hair on the head. It’s more ideal to work with because you can use high heat, and you can manipulate human hair more, but it definitely depends on the shoot and on the budget for editorials and the requirements. In the end, I like to work with both, because it’s not necessarily a bad thing to use synthetic hair. A lot of people use it for their wigs because it’s a cheaper way to change their hair. Also, with synthetic hair you can get really interesting colours. I don’t really have to play around with dyes. I can layer them and, in a way, create my own patterns. So yeah, I often mix both together even.

I’ve not necessarily thought about using it in my work, but I want to embrace it and not hide it. I want to be able to give it visibility in my work. If a model is, for example, wearing a piece of my work, and they’ve got hairy arms or legs, I’m not going to be like, ‘Oh, can you photoshop that out?’ Because that’s who they are.

As a teenager, I was never really interested in shaving or plucking eyebrows. I’m not interested in that now. When it comes to how you’re being perceived by men, the way they see it and the way they talk about it, I think it’s quite immature if they expect a woman to be clean-shaven all the time. Because why are they not? If they expect a woman to be clean-shaven, they should groom themselves too. So, I think the expectation of women to not have hairy legs or armpits is a construct of society. But it’s interesting, because I personally never grew up thinking body hair is something ugly and inappropriate. I remember my mum; my mum is the most elegant person ever. She is always dressed super nice—but when it comes to body hair, she’d lift her dress up, and she’d have really hairy legs. I always thought it was quite cool that she is like that.

I would never treat it carelessly. Hair deserves respect at all times. Because it’s an intimate material. It holds energy, so I handle it with intention; I’m careful with it, and I don’t waste. When I create pieces, whether it’s for a shoot, a hair sculpture or a wig, I’m not going to discard the leftovers. I will find a way to repurpose it.

In my old house, I basically had a bag of scraps of hair that were left over from shoots. They were all tiny little bits that I thought I could use again one day. So basically, during lockdown, I made really small keyrings of my friends’ initials and gave them to them. It was a way of connecting with people when people had to isolate themselves.

Um, I would say the story behind Black hair needing to be fixed. I’m trying to continuously rewrite that. Basically, I want to show it as a sculpture, as intellectual, as alive. My work is about embracing texture and turning it into objects. I kind of want to reclaim the idea that Black hair is difficult. Black hair is untidy. Black hair needs to be tamed. No, I want to celebrate it as it is. It’s not to say that I don’t think people should do their edges. I’m just questioning why it is that we have to tame it all the time.

I think I would choose Rosa Parks, because she’s a beautiful woman with a beautiful head of hair. What I would do is I would work with her natural state, maybe embrace her Afro and embellish it with diamonds. That’s what she deserves.